The Execution Ballet
by Tolehrer
Summary: "I'm not Skye," she told him bluntly. His fingernails bit into her shoulders hard enough to draw thin lines of blood. "I know." ... They don't get Skye to the GH-325 in time to save her, and May is sick of watching Ward derail.
1. Chapter 1

In the first week, he raged his way through the plane; a barely contained, furious whirlwind.

He punched his way through the glass of the holotable and then went into the cage to beat the unyielding walls with his already-bloody fists. May watched it all on the security feed from the seclusion of the flight deck; and when she saw him slump against the wall, exhausted, she closed the door remotely and activated the soundproofing, and watched as he curled into himself and screamed.

In the second week, he locked himself in his bunk. They heard his muffled cries at night and tried not to wince at the desperation in his voice when he called out her name. He ate and drank when the rest of them were asleep, and refused to look at her bunk.

In the third week, he nearly shot Simmons when she gently suggested they begin to clear out Skye's bunk.

May followed him down into the cargo hold-come-gym and watching him destroy a fifth punching bag. "You're destroying yourself," she called.

He ignored her, carried on viciously beating at the beg with unwrapped, blistering knuckles.

"Ward!" Finally, he turned to her. His eyes were sunken and hollow, surrounded by dark shadows. His hair hung lank across his forehead, thick stubble covered his jawline. His cheekbones, always sharp, looked brittle and deadly. "This isn't what Skye would want," May told him.

He flinched violently at her name and shook his head. "She doesn't want anything," he said. "She's dead."

His voice was harsh from using it to do nothing but scream out the name of a dead girl. "You've given up," she accused him.

He shrugged. "What should I fight for?"

May punched him in the face. His head snapped back and he staggered to keep his balance. "Do you think you're the first person to ever lose the one they loved? Do you think you're even the first person on this plane that applies to?"

She threw a brutal jab at his ribs; he sidestepped and blocked. His training was running him now; she could see it in his precise, practiced movements. They exchanged kicks, jabs, hooks, crosses, blocks. May led him around the cargo hold in a fierce dance, punctuating the sound of flesh hitting raw flesh with sharp, angry words. "You've given up without even a hint of a fight. If Skye were here, she would be ashamed of you-she would pity you."

He leapt at her then, wild and uncontrolled, eyes bloodshot and tears snagging on his lashes. He used nothing more than his height and weight to pin her, and she let him. "But she's not here," he whispered.

May let him bow his head to her shoulder, felt him push his face against her neck, brush her pulse with his lips. They were both sweat-slicked and breathing hard from the sparring match, and Ward's erection pressed firmly into her stomach. His shoulders shook with exertion, and terrible grief.

"I'm not Skye," she told him bluntly.

His fingernails bit into her shoulders hard enough to draw thin lines of blood. "I know."

He refused to look at her when he pushed roughly inside her, closing his eyes tightly against her gaze. She pressed a soft, sympathetic kiss to his throat anyway. You're not the only one on this plane who has lost someone they loved.

They moved together with the perfect grace of two expert fighters, silent except for the sharp gasps they both made when May tilted her hips up against his and dug her fingers into his ass. She whispered something into his ear in Mandarin; and language he didn't speak-but the words were not for him anyway.

It was a coupling born of necessity as much as grief, and guilt, and desperation. Her fingers moved against herself between them, awkward and self-serving. He hadn't the will to please her himself.

I'm not Skye, she had told him, plain and stark.

But it was Skye's name he whispered against the metal floor when he came, full of apology and regret.

May stood before he had recovered fully, pulled her shirt down and her trousers up. "I'm sorry," she said at last. "You're still not the only one on this plane who has lost someone."

"I don't know what to fight for," he admitted, pulling on dirty sweats.

She left without offering him an answer.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been nearly three months since they lost Skye.

In her own way, May missed the young hacker; she had brought a lightness, a unity to the team they had sorely lacked without her. Ward still flinched every time he passed her empty bunk, refused to even look at the med bay.

He was as deadly as ever, but there was a hollowness to him now. The most animated May saw him was when he was pounding deep into her, palming her breasts hard enough to leave faint red hand prints for a minute afterwards. After that first time, when she hauled him back from the brink of insanity, it was a few weeks before they fucked again. Then, it became almost regular. It was Skye's name he grunted when he came, and Skye's name he screamed at night, every night. May didn't care; she had her own name to whisper into Ward's shoulder. It worked, each of them using the other to make love to the dead.

He used to kiss the back of her neck when he had finished plaiting her hair. Sometimes, she imagined she could still feel the press of his lips there. Once, Ward thumbed the top of her spine in the exact spot; she broke one of his ribs throwing him away. "Not there," she hissed, "never there."

He didn't argue, didn't even look surprised, and it was then that she remembered Ward painstakingly destroying every single peg from the battleship game, crushing the model ships beneath his boots.

May understood sacred memories, she really did.

It was a warm day in late June, somewhere in southern Germany, when she found Ward locked in the interrogation room, his hands balled into taught fists in front of his face, shoulders heaving with silent anguish. His eyes were raw with unshed tears and he had worried his lip into a bloody mess. He took better care of himself now than he had in those first weeks, but he slipped, often.

"What is it?" May asked him, perfunctory. He didn't need any more emotion in his already overloaded system.

His voice was low and fractured. "I-I can't remember the colour of her eyes."

His words hit May like a sledgehammer to the gut, and she was suddenly in Beijing, twenty years ago.

_"Jian!" she called, running into the apartment._

_She found him in the doorway of the kitchen. "Mel, what is it?"_

_She fumbled for the camera in her pocket. "I have an idea."_

_His smile was long suffering; he knew about her ideas. They usually came just after a mission briefing, when she knew they would be apart for a long time. "What is it?"_

_"Here," she showed him, holding the camera out. "Take a picture of me."_

_Puzzled, he took the picture. "What was that for?" _

_"For you to keep, when I'm on my mission."_

_He smiled at her. "I have an album of wedding photos, Mel, I didn't need one more."_

_Taking the camera from his hands, she turned it on him and snapped several pictures before he could stop her. "Maybe not, but I did."_

May still had that picture, tucked safely in her bunk. She told herself that over and over when her breathing began to speed, because she did know what colour Jian's eyes were, she had that picture as proof, even now. For a second, she felt the ache of his death as strongly as she had on that day sixteen years ago.

She offered Ward a hand up that he took reluctantly, pulled him up off the floor. "I have a picture of the team in my bunk," she told him quietly. "The whole team. And I have a few of just her. One of the two of you."

His hand tightened around hers with bruising force. "Why?"

"Pictures are important," she said simply.


End file.
